A few times a week I swing by my local market to grab my morning drink and I almost always see the same cashier working. I look forward to visiting him when I can and I notice that it brightens my day to feel appreciated there. Although I wouldn’t call this person my friend, over the years we have gotten to know little things about each other. I know that he runs the store with his wife and father, he is an immigrant, and he works hard every day. He knows I love his wife’s Baklava and that I’m a college student. This kind of acquaintance level relationship is called a “weak tie” in the social psychology world. And while it doesn’t fill the same purpose as an in-depth meaningful relationship, researchers are finding that weak ties have powerful positive impacts.
Weak social ties are generally defined as relationships characterized by mutual recognition. These people may not be strangers, but your knowledge of them could have started that way. Think of community members or interactions with people you recognize in class, around campus, or at the Rec Center.
These weak social ties have many benefits. Even short interactions can provide potential networking experience and help open opportunities that you may not have known about otherwise. It affirms our place in society, outside of our friends or inner circle. This can be beneficial to both developing new hobbies and experiences as well as getting a new job or learning how to move up in a company.
Connection fuels us as humans, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. As this article from VeryWellMind mentions, anxiety, time, resources, and the impact of Covid-19 are just some of the factors that have made developing social ties more difficult for anyone. So in today's day and age, low pressure interactions like the example above can be an important way to gain some connection and boost your mood without the task of communication feeling like too much.
So, what can we do to build up weak social ties? This article by Psychology Today recommends three ways to develop more Weak social ties that are easy to do even if you feel unsure. One is to practice kindness towards strangers, the second is to reach out to people you love, and the third is to say yes to invitations from acquaintances. By opening ourselves up to do these small things, we may be able to cultivate positive moods, more friends, and maybe even career progress.
Here at Campus Rec the social skills and social networks we create impact us greatly. As individuals, we have the opportunity to boost the mood of a fellow staff member or patron by practicing kindness and being open to a social interaction. When each of us does this at work, as a community we are contributing to an inclusive and engaging social dynamic here at the Rec. At the end of the day, cultivating weak ties at work and in our lives in general helps create both more personal social and emotional wellbeing skills, and a more happy and healthy PSU community.